


Go Cosmos

by Kantayra



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Afterlife, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-04
Updated: 2011-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:18:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Sai, the afterlife was nothing but an infinite game of cosmic Go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go Cosmos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shayheyred](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayheyred/gifts).



The Hand of God was everywhere.

It was in the earth and the trees and the people that walked the earth. Every movement was the _pa-chi_ of a white or black stone upon the goban.

It was in the stars and the cosmos and beyond the universe. Moves and countermoves guided everything, each more breathtaking than the last.

And, of course, the Hand of God was in Go itself, which was everywhere, too. There weren’t physical bodies or hands or stones. But every essence in the beyond who saw the universe as Go seemed to mingle together. Millions of games played in every second and for eternity. The collective consciousness brought an impossible number of boards to life, played them out with agonizingly beautiful strategy, replayed them in even more awe-inspiring ways, and then moved on to even greater games.

The Hand of God fell upon the mortal world once in a lifetime, at most. But time was meaningless in the beyond. Maybe it was because there seemed to be infinite players or maybe it was because the players had had an eternity to master the game, but the Hand of God seemed to fall constantly, sometimes even sequentially in the same game, back-to-back, until Sai thought it might be possible to faint from the aching _perfection_ of the games played, even without a physical body.

If Sai had known there was such magnificent Go in the afterlife, he wouldn’t have clung to the mortal coil for so long.

Although that wasn’t entirely true, either. Earth wasn’t the best place to find the Hand of God, to be sure, but that didn’t making seeing it in a place where it was such a rarity any less sacred.

More importantly, Sai had had hundreds of students over the years and thousands of opponents. Minds he’d cultivated, challenged, and mentored. He saw them now when their lives were ended. Individuality wasn’t important in a place like this, but every so often he saw a familiar pattern forming on one of the boards or a well-known twist to a game, and Sai recognized those signatures. Magnificent plays that would never have come into existence without his tutelage.

For the first time it was really clear that Sai wasn’t Sai, wasn’t a wandering spirit who had clung to earth far too long.

Sai _was_ Go.

And Go was Sai.

And Sai could see himself immortalized in the Go here and the very flow of the cosmos itself, because it was all the same thing. Sai marveled at it all for an eon and perhaps more.

Sai played too, of course. He played more Go in what seemed like a second in this place than he had in a dozen lifetimes on earth. Every thought that he had about Go – which was, admittedly, nearly all his thoughts – was instantly seized upon by infinite other minds, infinite strategies.

An entire millennium of games could be inspired off a single “what if?” and Sai had so many “what ifs?” that he never lacked for a second.

He spun counterattacks off others’ ideas, too, so that at any given instant it felt as though he were playing every game in existence. The ebb and flow from game to game was never-ending. Yet still when he was done, there were more games to play. Because Go was infinite, endless, always improving and always adapting.

Sai wanted to weep from the grandiosity of it all.

The more Sai played, the more he realized it would never end. There were holes in the completeness of Go, even here. There were players who were still missing, the players Sai knew still dwelt on earth. They were still playing, too, he knew with a distant, ephemeral knowledge. They were honing their skills, perfecting their techniques, and when each of them passed over, they would bring another lifetime of experience to the collective whole. Nothing would ever become stagnant as long as there were still those living who played Go, as long as Go continued to _thrive_.

Sai eagerly awaited the day when they and their pupils and their pupils’ pupils would join the cosmic game, but he was in no hurry.

Until then, he played and played and played…

***

“Hey, Touya,” Hikaru said the next day at the Go Institute during their lunch break. “Do you think we’ll just keep playing Go in the afterlife?”

Touya took a sip of his tea and shrugged. “I don’t really know about that sort of thing.”

Hikaru sighed and stared off into space. “I had a dream last night. That the afterlife was full of nothing but Go and that entire games were being played there where each move was the Hand of God, one right after the other.”

Touya gave him a quizzical look. “It’s physically impossible for the first move in a game to be the Hand of God.”

“Fine, fine, I’m exaggerating a bit!” Hikaru waved his hands theatrically. “But still, every day the Hand of God was played millions of times. Do you think it’s really like that?”

“If it is,” Touya concluded slowly, “we’d better get in all the practice now that we can. Because we still have a long way to go.”

Hikaru grinned at that. “Are you done yet?” He tapped the table impatiently.

Touya finished his tea. “I’m ready.”

 _I’m coming, Sai,_ Hikaru promised to himself as he sat back down across from his opponent for that day. _We’re all coming. And we’re going to show you Go that you’ve never even conceived of before._

Hikaru was confident that next time he dreamed of Sai, Sai would be smiling with the knowledge that Hikaru’s promise held true.


End file.
